Gear & Gadgets —

HTC First review: Don’t call it the Facebook phone

Instead, Facebook Home is here. So how does the app integrate into this handset?

Last week at Facebook headquarters, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg officially announced Facebook Home, a small suite of applications that users can install on their Android devices to essentially “Facebook-ize” their phones. The event came after rumors that the social networking giant was finally pulling the trigger on an official handset. Facebook didn't announce a Facebook phone, but it did reveal a partnership with HTC to produce a mid-range handset that would come pre-installed with Facebook Home.

Specs at a glance: HTC First

Screen

1280×720 4.3-inch (341 ppi) glass display

OS

Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean

CPU

Dual-core 1.4GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon 400

RAM

1GB

GPU

Qualcomm Adreno 305

Storage

16GB, no expansion slot

Networking

802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC

Ports

Micro-USB, headphones

Camera

5.0MP rear camera, 1.6MP front camera

Size

4.96" × 2.56" × 0.35"

Weight

4.37 oz

Battery

2,000 mAh

Starting price

$99 with a two-year contract.

Sensor

Ambient light, GPS

Other perks

Facebook Home

Facebook intended to introduce a new way to make the smartphone experience "people-centric." Zuckerberg made the case that most mobile operating systems keep social interaction sequestered to several specific applications, forcing them to exist independent of each other and limiting them to particular lanes. But with an app like Facebook Home installed, the social network becomes the core of the mobile operating system. Notifications and status updates from friends or family become a priority rather than a grid of icons screaming for attention with loud, red-numbered badges.

To be clear, the HTC First is a nice looking phone, but it's not a “Facebook phone.” At its core, the First is an Android phone with a Facebook overlay. Once Facebook Home is officially released on April 12 in the Google Play store, five supported devices will all have the same Facebook Home functionality. The HTC First is its own product, which will also arrive at AT&T on April 12, but we’re going to review both the application and the handset as one entity because they’re sold as a package. Think of it as getting two reviews for the price of one.

HTC First

The HTC First is a smaller handset that’s not like the devices recently making headlines—phones like the HTC One, LG Optimus G Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S4, for instance. This is meant for a different subset of users. Unlike the aforementioned devices, the HTC First is only $100 with a two-year contract. Although mid-range phones are often quietly announced, this handset is seeing more fanfare because of its out-of-the-box features and native Facebook Home integration.

It's important to note that this isn't even the first "Facebook phone" that HTC has produced. Back in 2011, Facebook and HTC partnered up to release the HTC ChaCha and Salsa, two Android handsets with convenient Facebook buttons located right on the chassis. But a phone can’t be all about social networking—it should be able to stream video, keep a phone call going, and multitask, all the while feeding into its user’s social networking addiction.

Body, insides, and display

When I first held the phone in my hand, it immediately brought back flashbacks of my HTC Incredible from eons ago. The First is a very stylish, well-built phone, once again proving that HTC has a penchant for design. At 4.96 × 2.56 × 0.35 inches, the First is about the size of the iPhone 5, but as mentioned, it's smaller than some of the more popular phones on the market, like the Samsung Galaxy S III. It features a micro-USB charging port on the right-hand side, as well as a pinhole for the micro-SIM slot. The First also has a volume rocker on the left-hand side, a power button and headphone jack on top, and three navigational buttons below the display.

I can see the placement of the micro-USB port becoming a bit of an issue in situations where the phone is charging and it needs to be laid horizontally or placed in a car holster for navigation (this is the same issue I had with my Incredible way back when). It’s also awkward trying to type with both hands when the phone is plugged in.

Inside its black matte chassis, the phone is equipped with a dual-core 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor—which was part of the chipmaker’s CES announcement lineup earlier this year—as well as a 2,000 mAh battery pack, a 5MP rear-facing camera, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage. There is no expansion slot, nor is there a way to pop open the back cover and replace the battery. The HTC First is HSPA+ and LTE 850/1900 MHz compatible.

The handset is also equipped with a 720p, 4.3-inch display with 341 pixels per inch—that’s just a bit bigger than the iPhone 5’s display, but it's smaller than Samsung’s Galaxy S III. Since I've become so used to bigger displays in the last year, it’s been difficult to transition back to a smaller screen during the few days that I used the HTC First. The phone didn't necessarily feel antiquated because of its size, but it certainly felt different, even when I'd switch between it and my everyday phone (the Galaxy S III).

Enlarge/ One of these things is not like the others... (Left to right: Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC First, and LG Optimus G Pro.)

Enlarge/ The HTC First stacked on top of the Samsung Galaxy S III, which is stacked on top of the LG Optimus G Pro.

The screen size wasn't much of an issue except when reading e-books and text-heavy webpages. Reading a website on the 4.3-inch screen strained my eyes because they've gotten used to consuming content on bigger screens. I use a 4.8-inch display on a daily basis and the small numerical difference is apparent. This experience sometimes translates over to other applications too, especially with the original Facebook application (separate from Home). Fortunately, there is an option in the Settings menu to make the font bigger, which actually helped significantly.

In spite of that, the display still presents a pleasant photo experience for Facebook Home’s Cover Feed and other photograph-centric features. The colors seemed true to their nature and the picture was always vibrant, crisp, and easy to see. Only in direct sunlight was the screen a bit washed out, even with the brightness all the way up.

Florence Ion
Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.

Some of us have been asking for a 720p 4.3" screen. Others have been asking for HTC to build a phone with stock Android. Here it is! Too bad HTC's still stuck with carrier exclusives.

Anyway, those negatives don't seem very negative, or at least they shouldn't surprise anybody. What I thought would be its negatives - poor performance and poor camera - didn't happen. Sounds like another good phone that won't sell because it's not by Apple or Samsung.

Just so readers have a better appreciation for the First's battery life I wanted to make sure: I believe the BBC Sherlock episodes are each approx 88 minutes (as opposed to 50 min listed), so 11% burned might translate to 1% burned for every 8 min watched. Unless I am wrong Florence and you only watched 50 minutes of an episode?

Update: just re-read that you actually said you didn't watch the entire episode, sorry! So it's more like 1% for every 4.5 minutes watched.

Just so readers have a better appreciation for the First's battery life I wanted to make sure: I believe the BBC Sherlock episodes are each approx 88 minutes (as opposed to 50 min listed), so 11% burned might translate to 1% burned for every 8 min watched. Unless I am wrong Florence and you only watched 50 minutes of an episode?

Looks like a good entry level phone... depending how cheap the monthly contract is?

I would want more than 16GB of storage though. Why don't they have different models the way Apple does?

The monthly contract is the same as all other smartphones, and I could see storage being an issue. With a judicious use of Google Play Music and other services to offload the amount of local storage you need, it is quite possible to survive on 16GB of storage, but if HTC had more money to spend on such a pursuit, then various levels of storage would have been a good plan.

Am I the only one who finds it Interesting that dual-core Krait @ 1.4 GHz, 1GB of RAM, full LTE Cat 3, and a 4.3" 1280x720 display is considered "mid-range" while dual-core suspiciously-similar-substitute-for-Krait @ 1.3 GHz, 1GB of RAM, LTE Cat 3 sans the diversity needed for SVLTE, and a 4" 1164x640 display is considered "ultra high-end"?

It makes for a bit of a confusing lineup. The new One has BlinkFeed, aiming at a similar thing to Facebook integration (only it integrates more than just Facebook). It has a camera aimed squarely at social media (taking lower res but higher quality photos, which would look much better on small screens and cropped to facebook but not so great blown up, then the video sharing thing Zoe). And it's only $100 more (in the scheme of contracts, that's not much, especially considering a bigger 1080p screen, better hardware, more storage). Both are coming out at the same time but are completely different devices.

Granted, after the One lineup of V/S/X flopping despite consistency, maybe it's a good idea for HTC to just fire at everything.

I don't even like their website so I don't know why I would use an overlay on my phone to annoy me!

Just for instance, today I had an annoying popup wanting me to take a tutorial of their new graph search. To make it go away you only had two options, spends several minutes going through it or choose remind me later! Then next time you log on it's there again!! No way to opt out or cancel it all together. Just stupid!

Stupid annoying crap like that is scattered all throughout Facebook! You really think I am going to put up with this crap on my phone start page????

This is at least the second time an Ars editor has made similar comments in the past few months (thought I don't remember if it's the same person or not):

Florence Ion wrote:

[I]f you want to delete an application, you have to select it from the general applications screen and drag it up to uninstall. Thankfully, this is much more convenient than navigating to the Application Manager from within the Android Settings menu.

This "feature" keeps showing up in recent Android device reviews as if it's something new. It's been around since Android ICS was released in October of 2011, over a year and a half ago. See link:

Quote:

Also, in All Apps launcher, you can now simply drag an app to get information about it or immediately uninstall it, or disable a pre-installed app.

I'm OK with new features being pointed out in reviews, but it would be nice to have people familiar with the OS (or at least prudent enough to follow release notes) reviewing things, so we don't keep hearing about a feature that has existed for a long time (and even longer if we look at things like Cyanogen Mod) as if it's something new.

A 4.3" screen is what it is. But for someone who has made their peace with a near-5" display, it will look a little...puny.

If you want a 4.3" screen, you have this option.

I'm not sure that facebook will sell to the Ars crowd, but I can see it doing well with the public at large who does value that type of thing. I just wish HTC would realize that Sense doesn't have to be the hub that their entire Android world revolves around.

This phone is clearly targeted at teenagers, for whom Facebook is everything and ease of Facebooking paramount, and for whom the Facebook brand has cachet. The smaller size and low price dovetail with that.

I don't want this phone — both because I prefer iOS and because I see Facebook Home as too intrusive — but it seems silly for people to be attacking the phone because it's not what they want. You say you love Android for the choice it provides. If you really feel that way, then be thankful that there's another choice that's targeted at a demographic that's not you. I don't like the phone and don't want it, but it seems silly that people who aren't the phone's target audience would attack it, when it MIGHT be exactly what someone else wants. Just accept that you're not the target audience for this and let it go at that.

Forget about Facebook Home, this is a very decent phone at a great price! Before today there's not one HTC phone that I'd recommend to a friend, today there's one, and it's one with Facebook Home preinstalled at that.

As for Facebook Home, it's actually better than I thought it'd be, it provides features wanted by some demography while allowing itself to be disabled. I think it may prove to be more useful to quite a number of people over the stock Android launcher. Let's be honest here: most people don't want to learn all the intricacies of Android, they just want something that they can easily understand and use right away, which quite often involves using Facebook.

So kudos to both HTC and Facebook for making the market more diverse in a meaningful way.

Wow, this PPI (Pixel Per Inch) race is starting to look exactly like the megapixel race did with cameras, where the consumers are getting less, so that they spec sheet can have a higher numbers. In the GL benchmarks here, note that the 440ppi (1080p) phones like the Optimus G Pro, score about 30% slower on the onscreen benchmarks than the older 300ppi phones like the Optimus G and iPhone 5.

So in the end, with this next generation of 1080p phones, the consumer is getting a phone with worse battery life, that performs worse in games, and looks exactly the same at a normal view distance.

This phone is clearly targeted at teenagers, for whom Facebook is everything and ease of Facebooking paramount, and for whom the Facebook brand has cachet. The smaller size and low price dovetail with that.

Not a bad move, business wise.

perhaps not even to teens even. I'm 39, work in the industry and i use facebook regularly. my reasons for doing so are about connecting with ppl i know not popularity. as such, facebook is the best way to do this.

something like home wouldn't interest me as it's clearly designed for social media addicts. my wp 7.5 performs a similar function but allows me control over when it should show me.

i like the idea but a whole os ui built around it could be very annoying. that is to say, it could become very intrusive.

A 4.3" screen is what it is. But for someone who has made their peace with a near-5" display, it will look a little...puny.

If you want a 4.3" screen, you have this option.

That still doesn't explain why it's a negative in this review. For a substantial number of people a 5" display is a big negative because it means you can't carry your phone in your pocket. That makes a smaller screen a big positive.

In other words it is a subjective option, and shouldn't be weighted negatively or positively in a review unless it is a big detriment or gain for the vast majority of potential users.

Disappointing that Ars neglect to review the HTC One - which is a very important phone for the Android platform - yet review this seen-it-before midrange thing.

Surely a review of the One and a separate review / in depth analysis of the Facebook Home software (which, face it, is the only interesting bit about the First, and is not exclusive to the First) would be more useful and interesting?

Hm, the fact that you can get Chatheads only installing the Facebook Messenger app is really interesting for me. It's cool that they split functionalities in bits so you're not burdened to the whole package if you only like one aspect of it.

Add a SD slot and it would be great. FB crap can be removed and hopefully there will be some home made android for it soon. Good size. good screen. decent battery. what is there not to love? Fact that for once you can use the phone with one hand and still get decent performance?

Wow, this PPI (Pixel Per Inch) race is starting to look exactly like the megapixel race did with cameras, where the consumers are getting less, so that they spec sheet can have a higher numbers. In the GL benchmarks here, note that the 440ppi (1080p) phones like the Optimus G Pro, score about 30% slower on the onscreen benchmarks than the older 300ppi phones like the Optimus G and iPhone 5.

So in the end, with this next generation of 1080p phones, the consumer is getting a phone with worse battery life, that performs worse in games, and looks exactly the same at a normal view distance.

In other words it is a subjective option, and shouldn't be weighted negatively or positively in a review unless it is a big detriment or gain for the vast majority of potential users.

Reviews are subjective opinions.

Anyone that bothers reading the review can see why the author feels a smaller screen is a negative, and decide whether a smaller screen is a positive for them. If you're happy with the size and resolution of a retina iPhone, this is perfect for you, it's right there on the review.

"I can see the placement of the micro-USB port becoming a bit of an issue in situations where the phone is charging and it needs to be laid horizontally or placed in a car holster for navigation (this is the same issue I had with my Incredible way back when). It’s also awkward trying to type with both hands when the phone is plugged in."

If you tend to use your phone in portrait, the bottom USB ports are bad and side is better. At least with it on the side, you have the option of turning your phone the other way so that the port is on the top.

My "car holster" (for lack of dash space) is a cup holder, so I can't use GPS and charge at the same time with a bottom jack.

I have the same issue with my tablet -- if I need to charge it a bit while reading, I really can't with the port on the bottom without holding it up in midair instead of resting the bottom against something like I normally would.

So I think there's a place for side ports for some users. Wireless charging and data connections will hopefully become the norm soon and the point will be moot.

IF the next 4 inch Iphone doesn't get a negative for its tiny puny cramped screen, I will be pissed.

Apples shit always smells like roses to reviewers.

Except that ignores the fact that the two different OSes are increasingly being optimized for two different screen sizes. I played with an HTC One V in store a little while ago. Even with its lower resolution, the physical size of all the UI elements was smaller than the iOS counterparts. At the end of the day, a button on a 4 inch iOS device is going to be physically larger than a button on a 4 inch Android device and possibly even a 4.3 ins android device.

Wow, this PPI (Pixel Per Inch) race is starting to look exactly like the megapixel race did with cameras, where the consumers are getting less, so that they spec sheet can have a higher numbers. In the GL benchmarks here, note that the 440ppi (1080p) phones like the Optimus G Pro, score about 30% slower on the onscreen benchmarks than the older 300ppi phones like the Optimus G and iPhone 5.

So in the end, with this next generation of 1080p phones, the consumer is getting a phone with worse battery life, that performs worse in games, and looks exactly the same at a normal view distance.

I mostly agree, but I don't think you should totally discount the growing phenomenon of connecting a phone to a TV (or monitor). Obviously the phone doesn't need a 1080p display to push out 1080p over HDMI. With that said, if it has the hardware power to push out 1080p, putting in a 1080p display seems trivial.

Also, I doubt very many games will run at a native 1080p. They'll likely still run at 720 or 480 regardless of the screen resolution.

Disappointing that Ars neglect to review the HTC One - which is a very important phone for the Android platform - yet review this seen-it-before midrange thing.

Surely a review of the One and a separate review / in depth analysis of the Facebook Home software (which, face it, is the only interesting bit about the First, and is not exclusive to the First) would be more useful and interesting?

We're disappointed, too, and it's something we're struggling to rectify. Without casting any blame in any direction, Ars did not receive an HTC One review unit and we are still attempting to get HTC to send us one.